1

1

MADDY

A

bi was on the other side of the bar, pulling chairs down from table tops. It was Friday, so I was thankful for the help in getting the place ready for the evening rush. It would have taken me an hour if I had to do it on my own.

“Hey, Maddy? Do you want these tables moved farther apart?” Abi asked.

I stopped wiping the bar top and glanced over. “No, you can leave them where they are. It should be fine.”

“Okay, cool.” She flipped the last chair over, set it on its legs, and then slid it under the table. I’d moved behind the bar to start polishing the wine glasses when she came over and slapped her hands on the bar. “Holy shit, did I tell you I got my results back?” she asked.

I stopped mid-polish and looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “Results? What kind? STD? Pregnancy? SAT? What?”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be an asshole. No, the DNA ancestry thing I sent off a few weeks ago. Remember?”

I did remember. The main thing I remembered was her hyperventilating before swabbing her cheek. We’d done it at her house, and I thought she was actually going to pass out when she saw the blood.

“I do. What did it say?”

“Well, I know you’ll be shocked, but I’m seventy percent Irish.”

I glanced up at the bright red hair braided down her back and the bright green eyes twinkling with excitement and shrugged. “No way. I was sure you’d be Argentinian or maybe Japanese.”

“Very funny. Though, I did get a fun little surprise. I’m one percent West African.”

“Ugh.” I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling. “I really hope that doesn’t mean you had some shitty slave-owning ancestor who liked to take advantage of the people he’d enslaved.”

Abi’s face fell and she tilted her head. “Well, damn. I hadn’t thought of that. I kinda hoped my great-great-great grandma fell in love with some handsome mysterious man while on a sailing trip or something.”

“Let’s go with that. Much less depressing.”

“You should do it, too,” Abi said.

“What? Sail around the world and fall in love with a mysterious man? Deal.”

“No, dummy, the ancestry thing. We can order a kit today. It’ll be here in no time. It doesn’t just tell you about your lineage, it also tells you if there are any diseases you’re susceptible to. It’s pretty interesting. I’m apparently twenty percent more likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis than the average person. Yay, me. Plus, I found three cousins I didn’t know I had. I already friended one on social media.”

The idea gave me a little flutter of anxiety. Finding out about genetic things did intrigue me. Being adopted, it would be nice to know if I had a higher risk of diabetes or heart disease, and would give me a head start on preventing things like that. But finding out about my birth family? That was more nerve-wracking.

When my parents had finally told me I was adopted, I’d gone through a full-on identity crisis. Who was I? Was my entire life a lie? Why did my biological parents give me away? All the things a young teenager would flip out about. It took about a year for me to come to terms with it. My mom and dad were the people who’d raised me from birth, and that was all I needed to know. I’d given up thinking about my birth parents a long time ago. The thought of stirring all that up again was mildly disturbing.

“I honestly don’t care much about my heritage,” I said.

“Okay, sure, but what about knowing if…I don’t know…if whatever kids you someday have might have cystic fibrosis or if you’re more likely to get breast cancer? Doesn’t that interest you?”

It did, I had to admit that. I thought about it for several seconds as I finished polishing the last wine glass and started on the beer steins. I already had chronic anemia, for which I had to take supplements. What else could be lurking in my DNA? I didn’t plan on having kids anytime soon, but knowing they might have some genetic anomaly before I ever got pregnant was always better than finding out last minute.

“Okay, if I did do this thing,” I said, “how would I get a kit?”

Abi clapped her hands. “Yes! I’m so excited. Oh, what if we find out we’re cousins or something?”

“The kit, Abi? How do I get one?” I asked, ignoring her comment.

“Hang on.” She pulled her cell phone out. “I’ll send you the link.”

My phone pinged a few seconds later, but I left the text unopened. There was too much to do to get ready for the night. We finished prepping the bar before the first customers started to roll in—mostly regulars who’d just gotten off work. The night was way busier than I’d anticipated, but it was all good. People had made fun of me for getting a business degree only to turn right around and open a bar instead of going into corporate America, but I was pretty sure I made more than a lot of people my age. Twenty-eight and making over six figures a year? I’d take the busy and late nights. It was a pretty damned good trade-off.

Last call was at two in the morning, and by 3:30, I had everything cleaned up and the place locked. By four, I’d crashed at home and sleeping like the dead.

The next day, I rolled over in bed and grabbed my phone, the time on the screen showing it was noon. I saw Abi’s message with the link to the ancestry site and stared at it for a few seconds, debating. I was still nervous about what I might discover. Whatever diseases I might be at risk for was not as scary as finding out about the people I had come from. I’d never been able to find any information about my birth parents. Would I find out they were serial killers? I chewed at my lip, thinking.

“Screw it,” I said, and clicked the link.

Less than five minutes later, I’d purchased a kit. The company was based in Florida, and only a two-hour drive from where I lived here in Clearidge. It said I was eligible for free one-day shipping. I’d have it the next day. I put it out of my mind and went about my business the rest of that day and night.

Abi was at my place having lunch the next afternoon when the package arrived. I brought it in from the mailbox, and when she saw it, her eyes lit up. “It came. Nice. Let’s do this,” she said, putting her sandwich down.

“Do we really need to get a wad of spit out of me while we’re eating?” I asked.

“Oh, come on, we were done anyway. Whip it out.”

“Isn’t that what you always tell your boyfriends?”

“Very funny. You know what I mean.”

I cut open the box and pulled out all the items. It was pretty cut and dry. I poked my finger, put a drop of blood on a little cardboard sample card, and packed it back up. “Is that all?”

Abi nodded. “That’s it. Just put that baby back in your mailbox and raise the little red flag. Are you excited?”

I shrugged, trying to hide my anxiety. “I don’t know, maybe.”

“What are you going to do if you have any DNA matches?”

That was the very thing freaking me out. Instead of directly answering her question, I told her I’d be right back and took the box out to the mailbox. Once I got back inside, it was easy to change the subject. The truth was, I wasn’t totally sure what I would do if there were matches. I had no idea why I’d been given up for adoption. My adoptive parents had told me the adoption agency had no information about me. All they knew was that a guy claiming to be a social worker had brought me in as a baby. He told them he knew my parents and they didn’t want to be involved in the adoption process or have their names put down. The problem, my dad had told me, was once the agency looked into the social worker, they couldn’t find any trace or record of him.

That story had always haunted me. Had I been kidnapped? Or had they truly wanted to get rid of me? My parents didn’t even have my original birth certificate. They’d found the hospital I’d been born at, but my birth mother’s name had been registered simply as Jane Doe. All of it had pointed toward my birth parents being less than trustworthy. Why in the world would you not put your real name down when having a baby? The only thing I had from my birth parents was my name. The mysterious social worker had told the adoption agency my name was Maddison.

Thoughts of the test came and went over the next few weeks as I waited on the results. The website said it could take up to a month to receive them. A few weeks later, Abi asked again if I’d received the results.

“No, again, for the five hundredth time,” I said with a groan. I was starting to get more irritated each time she asked.

“Sorry, sorry. I just like stuff like this. I get excited. Oh, you never answered when I asked what you’d do with any matches. Are you gonna stalk them on the internet? Friend-request them?”

The thought that my very existence could spell disaster for someone had started to rear its head. What if my birth parents had only been kids and given me up so they could go on with their lives? What if they had their own families now? Would shoving my nose into everything upend their entire lives?

I didn’t blurt out what I was thinking. Instead, I took the safe route. “I don’t know. I’ll wait to see what the test says and go from there.”

Fate didn’t force me to wait long. My phone chirped a few hours later with a text that let me know the results were ready. I didn’t open the email, though. My fear and anxiety spiked as soon as I saw the message.

I called Abi to let her know and see if she could come over. She was, of course, beyond excited about it and was at my place in less than twenty minutes.

I had my laptop open, the email link to the test ready. Abi walked in and pointed to the screen. “All right, sister, let’s see it.”

I took a breath and opened the link. The first couple of pages explained what the company had done and also assured me that my DNA wouldn’t be shared or sold to outside companies. Finally, I pulled up the page with possible genetic markers for disease. Thankfully, there were none, except a negligible chance of developing irritable bowel syndrome at some point. Ugh, pleasant reading.

The next page brought up possible DNA matches. It was the one I was most excited and nervous to see. But the results were less than enlightening.

“Seriously?” Abi said, sounding dejected.

The only match was for some guy who’d lived nearly three hundred years ago. I didn’t even know how they had any DNA from the guy to match me, but there it was. I leaned back, sighing in both relief and disappointment.

“I had like thirty different people matched to me,” Abi said. “Most were distant, though. I can’t believe you only have one. That’s crazy.”

“Yeah. Oh, well. We can’t all have slave-owning rapists in our family tree,” I said, nudging her.

“Hey, don’t be an asshole. You can’t choose your ancestors.”

“Right. Let’s go, we need to get the bar ready.”

It was another Friday night, and my mind rested a little easier than it had the last few weeks. It was a relief to know I didn’t have to make some big life-altering decision to contact a stranger and let them know I was their daughter. For the first time in weeks, I was able to enjoy my job without that weighing on me.